Pluricontinental frontier towns in the hinterlands of Bahia and Minas Gerais

Judy Bieber & Hélida Santos Conceição

Introduction

This chapter analyzes the formation of gold mining towns in the Brazilian sertões, in spanning the local and the global, as proposed by Giovanni Levi (2018). We offer a number of historiographical interventions; the first is emphasizing the importance of the Bahian mining sector, as evidenced by the incorporation of three towns in the 1720s.^[1] The second is reevaluating the role played by sertanistas in establishing urban centers in the Bahian interior. While the sertanistas, especially in their traditional portrayal as bandeirantes, were often depicted as existing above or beyond the law, we highlight explorers who sought to become inserted into the institutional structures of the Old Regime. They did so both pragmatically and symbolically, fully participating in the rituals associated with the creation of incorporated towns and in forms of communication appropriate for centralized authorities. We argue that their frontier location was precisely what made it vital for these urban centers to integrate themselves into the socio-spatial, institutional, and economic dynamics of the Portuguese pluricontinental monarchy.^[2] Third, we emphasize structures beyond the municipal councils in the formation of interior towns. Mining communities depended on multiple authorities to fulfill their primary mandates: the collection of the Royal Fifth or quinto (the 20% tax on minerals), and the maintenance of social order. Consequently, we also focus on the role played by militias (ordenanças), paid troops of dragoons (tropa de Dragões), magistrates, fiscal authorities, and mining superintendents, all of whom created interlocking networks of patronage and influence.

Studying the interior territories of Portuguese America presents a two-fold challenge. On the one hand, we reconstruct how the pluricontinental Lusitanian monarchy mapped governability on the sertão. On the other, we assess the agency of local historical actors who engaged in frontier expansion and territorial conquest. These two dimensions were linked by clientelist networks within which countless men created innovative administrative strategies to facilitate the exploitation and taxation of natural resources and trade. In so doing, they equilibrated local and global interests. We employ the concept of Portuguese pluricontinental monarchy because it allows for a nuanced analysis of political negotiations between local actors who operated according to established customs and centralized authorities informed by bureaucratic norms.^[3]

Our objective is to demonstrate how towns in the interior, although unequally positioned due to their remote geographical location, nonetheless participated in the global process of urbanization defined by Portuguese conquest. As Roney has observed, all imperial cities could be “dynamic economic hubs and nodes deeply linked in trade, information, and political circuits. Cities of all types might be crucibles of economic, cultural, and political transformation” (2017, p. 650). These interior towns participated in administrative strategies to facilitate their territorial insertion into broader imperial networks according to modes typical of the Old Regime of the Tropics (Fragoso, Bicalho, and Gouvêa, 2001). The creation of juridical spaces like parishes, municipalities, and judicial districts provided opportunities for prominent local men to broker administrative inclusion for ensuring payment of the quinto. Providing services to the King afforded access to the center by developing patronage relationships through which local power was articulated. By the mid-1700s, the Bahian sertão would possess the fundamental political and judicial architecture of the Lusitanian pluricontinental monarchy.

The creation of interior towns in Bahia owed as much to local actors as it did to actors located in imperial political centers. Our case study includes the three gold mining towns of Jacobina (1722), Rio de Contas (1725), and Minas Novas do Araçuaí (1730), established along the ill-defined borderlands of the captaincies of Bahia and Minas Gerais. This territory encompassed more than 200 leagues, between the São Francisco River to the north and the Doce River to the south (Santos, 2010). The geographical area encompassed by these three municipalities was correspondingly vast. We refer to this region as a pluricontinental frontier due to its contested nature, being disputed by diverse agents: European, Luso-Brazilian, indigenous, or enslaved Africans.^[4] Through innumerable quotidian interactions, these individuals competed for natural resources (gold, silver, gemstones, saltpeter, lands, livestock), economic assets (trade routes, tax contracts, sesmarias, mining claims, and slaves) and marks of symbolic prestige (privileges, honors, boons, and titles).

Our research employs documentation that goes beyond what colonial administrators produced, privileging what Santos (2018) calls notícias, reports developed by sertanistas, based on local knowledge and framed within narratives of self-sacrifice for the Crown and the common good (o bem comum). These were used to consolidate networks of influence and to leverage favors from the Crown. Particularly valuable is the correspondence written by the mining superintendents and sertanistas Pedro Barbosa Leal and Pedro Leolino Maris, as well as numerous other local officials, prospectors, soldiers, and guides who left detailed descriptions of local power dynamics, conflicts, and contested territories. For the historian, these previously neglected documents enable the reconstruction of dynamics of conquest and creation of institutions within the normative administrative framework of the Old Regime. They also enable us to compensate for the fact that little documentation from these municipal councils survives. We also use Cartas de patentes (letters patent) as a previously underutilized source that shows how sertanistas laid the territorial claims that would undergird the eventual formation of incorporated towns. While most letters patent are formulaic in content, some describe the nominee’s prior administrative experience, patronage networks, and knowledge of interior landscapes and their economic potential. The sertanistas often sought patents as the basis to make subsequent territorial claims and achieve broader political ambitions.

Bahian gold mining towns and their insertion into the Portuguese Pluricontinental Monarchy

Intensive gold prospecting extended along river basins connecting Bahia to the captaincies of Sergipe D’El Rei, Pernambuco, Piauí, Maranhão and Minas Gerais. While the development of an interior cattle economy was undeniably important, it was gold mining that decisively elevated the Bahian interior to its strategic integration into the political body. The Crown then installed a political-jurisdictional apparatus that replicated the Portuguese Old Regime society. The institution of courts, municipal councils, and fiscal administration transformed perceptions about sertanejo territory, in particular its capacity for dialogue between local and central government. This play of interactions did not revolve exclusively around the collection of the royal fifth. Settlers also developed a deeper and more enduring sense of political self-representation, albeit mediated by the political and demographic instability typical of mining towns. Over time, the Crown came to appreciate the internal logic and particularities of mining towns, and thus reformulated the rules of the political game. This ability to adapt on the part of the Crown and its officials enabled the development of new approaches towards the fluid and often adventurous process of gold mining.

The process of embedding the Bahian interior within the pluricontinental monarchy began with the founding of the incorporated towns of Jacobina (1722), Rio de Contas (1725) and Minas Novas de Araçuaí (1730). They established councils by which residents practiced self-governance over vast municipal jurisdictions. Two foundry houses were built to ensure the collection of the royal fifth. The Crown authorized the creation of militia companies and salaried dragoons to maintain social order and collect taxes. The new judicial district of Southern Bahia was created in 1737 but only secured its first ouvidor in 1742 (Conceição, 2017). The region’s growing economic and demographic importance and its distance from the city of Salvador da Bahia justified the implantation of a judicial apparatus in a geographically peripheral region.

Crown decisions were influenced by an extensive network of royal officials, sertanistas and the fixed and itinerant populations of the territory. Local actors developed interactive strategies that we call the “political grammar of conquest,” based on an understanding of the importance of their “peripheral” area as a conduit for global flows of governance, administration, and revenue within the pluricontinental monarchy. These individuals of the sertão knew how tapped on this grammar to their advantage and refined a social and political vocabulary to establish and preserve long-term channels of communication with both overseas administrators and the Crown, embedding hinterland towns into the hierarchical norms of the Old Regime. As will be demonstrated, this political grammar invoked simultaneously hierarchical and reciprocal relationships of power between local actors and centralized authorities.

Closely following the mining discoveries along the Rio das Velhas in the 1690s, which inspired Brazil’s first gold rush in what would become Minas Gerais, prospectors also explored the Bahian sertões, seeking gold, silver, saltpeter, and gemstones (Boxer, 1969; Russell-Wood, 1987). Gold was discovered in the districts of Jacobina, Serro do Frio and Itacambira between 1701-1703, leading the Crown to prohibit further exploration out of fear of foreign invasion and the inability to contain smuggling (Accioli, 1940, p. 16).^[5] However, this ban did not deter sertanistas from exploring the region in search of mineral wealth nor Bahian governors from issuing letters patent sanctioning conquest in the sertões. By the 1710s, clandestine gold mining was widespread in the Bahian interior at Jacobina and Rio de Contas, located about 80 leagues inland from the city of Salvador. This region had been occupied by farmers and ranchers since the 17th century. These settlers would serve as the foundation for self-governance for the mining towns of Jacobina and Rio das Contas. The “New Mines” near the Araçuaí and Fanado rivers would not be discovered until 1727. This region had not been previously populated by the Portuguese. It would be hotly contested by the governor general of Minas Gerais and by decentralized autonomous indigenous communities that occupied the principal river basins to the east.

On December 2, 1720, Viceroy Vasco Fernandes Cesar de Meneses ordered Justice Luiz de Siqueira da Gama to appoint a clerk and bailiff to establish an incorporated town at Jacobina and to implement the collection of the royal fifth. However, the viceroy’s plans were frustrated when the judge fell ill 30 leagues into his journey and was forced to return to Salvador. Reporting the failed endeavor to D. John V, Meneses commented that he had been “perplexed for some time” by the contradictory nature of the reports about gold mining in Jacobina. He therefore resolved “to send an intelligent person [to] investigate to inform his decision.” The viceroy, the highest authority in the State of Brazil, chose colonel and sertanista Pedro Barbosa Leal to fulfill this objective.

By royal decree and in consultation with the viceroy, in 1721 Colonel Pedro Barbosa Leal was appointed superintendent of all the mineral districts of the sertão. He was ordered to oversee the collection of the fifth accumulated since 1720, to demarcate and confirm existing mining claims, and to establish an incorporated town. It is noteworthy that a sertanista was appointed to fulfill these tasks which customarily corresponded to magistrates. Viceroy Vasco Fernandes Cesar de Meneses justified his choice with reference to the Colonel’s character, stating that he “is not only zealous, active, and disinterested, but has all of the other attributes that make him worthy of my trust in him (emphasis added)” (Costa, 1951, pp. 204-205).

It was essential for Barbosa Leal to establish his authority. On February 15, 1722, he published an edict on the royal right to a fifth of all gold collected and to tax other goods that entered and left the mines, including “cattle, flour, all other foodstuffs and beverages, manufactures, dry goods, and any other merchandise.”^[6] As there was no nearby foundry or mint, gold dust was the principal form of currency in the mining districts. Before leaving the region, traders were to declare their goods and the amount of gold dust received upon arrival and departure at certain checkpoints, where one fifth would be deducted.

After instituting tax collection in 1721, the colonel mobilized the residents to install the town of Jacobina. The viceroy instructed them to choose a house to hold meetings, investigations, judicial proceedings, and to organize cavalry regiments (Documentos Históricos, 1939, p. 210). The viceroy and Barbosa Leal coordinated through extensive correspondence the establishment of councils at Jacobina and Rio de Contas. Despite the considerable distances between the interior towns and the city of Salvador, the turnaround time for correspondence was normally only 30 days. These communications indicate that the collection of the fifth was far more urgent than the construction of the chamber, which would not be completed for two years. Colonel Barbosa Leal was to guarantee tax collection immediately, mediating the needs of local miners and the structures imposed by centralized Crown authorities. A similar situation prevailed in Minas Gerais, where mineiro chambers negotiated the value ​​of the fifth with the King (Oliveira, 2019, p. 119).

Town councils were seen as the fairest means to promote justice and the common good, by correcting imbalances that might threaten the social order. This model extended to unincorporated areas of conquest, and it is in this sense that we understand the Crown’s commitment —especially during the reign of D. John V— to elevating these gold mining villages into incorporated towns. The Bahian viceroy suggested procedures that would foster an effective political body at the mines of the sertão, such as the appointment of the most reputable men to serve in the militias. Letters patent conferred prestige and incorporated local potentates into the viceroy’s clientelist network. These militia officers were responsible for supervising miners, ensuring the collection of the fifth, and maintaining law and order. Office holders functioned as an informal local nobility by gaining public recognition from both the community and centralized decision-makers. Colonel Pedro Barbosa Leal, as the viceroy’s local representative, was responsible for recommending these essential appointments for confirmation by the viceroy.

While the house that will serve as a chamber is not yet established, you will be able to propose to the viceroy capable and suitable subjects to serve as judges, councilors, clerks and other officers […] they will be able to learn about the causes and duties that affect you. Likewise, you will propose to His Excellency persons for the posts of colonel, lieutenant colonel, sergeant major and other militia officers that should be created in this district (Documentos Históricos, 1939, p. 211).

On June 24, 1722, the Colonel convened “the residents who inhabit this site and its surroundings, both farm-owners and some miners, to gather the most noble, wealthy and influential people” (Costa, 1951, p. 272). These residents [moradores] of Saí, the parish seat of Santo Antônio da Jacobina, adjacent to the mission of Nossa Senhora das Neves, participated in the town’s act of foundation. At the inauguration, along with Jacobina’s scribe and Colonel Pedro Barbosa Leal, 28 individuals were present, including new councilors, moradores and miners. On July 22, 1722, just one month after the town was established, the city officials sent the following document to King D. John V:

His Majesty has deigned by his Royal Greatness and piety to order Vasco Fernandes César de Meneses, viceroy and captain general of this State, to create in the district of Jacobina a town with a magistrate for the inhabitants, so that they might live closer to the service of God and the laws of His Majesty, and that it be carried out with such zeal and promptness as all these peoples supplicate loudly and piously His Majesty; and we, the council officials in the name of the aforesaid humble and grateful peoples, rectify and promise the utility and obedience we owe as good and loyal vassals of Your Majesty. We swear to obey and to observe everything that Your Majesty commands us to do in your royal service. May God protect your Majesty’s person for many years as your loyal vassals require.^[7]

Jacobina’s council consisted of three councilmen, a justice of the peace, a financial guarantor (procurador) and a scribe, assisted by militia officers. With rare exceptions, patents were granted to the most respected men of the community, who received orders, proclamations, and letters directly from the viceroy to ensure the good government of the King. In 1725, Colonel Manoel de Figueiredo Mascarenhas was entrusted with the community’s social order:

I highly recommend to Your Excellency the tranquility of these residents and I hope that their respect and prudence will reduce them to such obedience as will generate no disarray among them, nor the least disorder that otherwise might result in disservice to His Majesty, may God protect him; and as all those who find themselves entrusted with the military governance of that district should attend to His Excellency with some particularity (Documentos Históricos, 1940, p. 213).

In 1723, just a year after the town’s foundation, local residents led by Colonel Garcia de Ávila Pereira, an important landowner of the region, appealed to the Crown to change the location of the town’s seat. The colonel claimed that it had been erected on his lands; settlers and miners residing in an arraial called Jacobina Nova, near the Bom Jesus da Glória mission, endorsed the colonel’s cause. Jacobina Nova was located approximately 18 leagues from Jacobina Velha, the seat of the parish of Nossa Senhora das Neves do Saí, where Pedro Barbosa Leal had erected the town. The petitioners alleged that the site did not take into account what would be “more suitable for the convenience of the residents.”^[8]The king granted their request by sending ouvidor Pedro Gonçalves Cordeiro to the sertão in February 1724, with orders to transfer the town’s seat to the site of the mission of Senhor Bom Jesus da Glória. The change took effect on June 5, 1724. This location was deemed the best “due to being in the middle of the mines, affording considerable advantages for litigants, who may retire to their homes every day after dealing with bureaucratic demands and appeals.” A little more than thirty residents lived in the Bom Jesus mission, not counting the indigenous village, and a church where they could hear Mass and “attend divine services.” It was the location most frequented by the populace, with a road leading to the São Francisco River, Arraial, and Minas Gerais (Costa, 1951, p. 281). Jacobina’s jurisdictional boundaries extended, to the north, to the Captaincy of Sergipe Del Rei; southeast, in the direction of the Recôncavo, to the municipal boundaries of Cachoeira and Maragogipe; south, to the captaincy of Ilhéus up to the coast; to the Rio das Mortes on the boundary with Minas Gerais, and to the border with Pernambuco, at the islands in the middle of the Rio de São Francisco.^[9]

In 1724, Colonel Pedro Barbosa Leal proceeded to the arraial of Mato Grosso, where the town called Nossa Senhora do Livramento das Minas do Rio de Contas soon would be established (Almeida, 2012, pp. 25-36). He reasoned that the creation of a town and a magistrate would yield social order, as had occurred in Jacobina. The expenses of the town hall and the jail were to be borne by the moradores, as required of royal subjects. Moreover, a resident had donated the site for said town hall and jail (Accioli, 1940, p. 80). After the town was established and the accumulated fifth collected, the viceroy promptly ordered Colonel Barbosa Leal to return to the city of Bahia, “after having opened a road from Jacobina to Rio das Contas”^[10]which integrated the supply routes from the Rio de São Francisco to the Bahian mines and Minas Gerais. It was used mainly to transport gold from the districts of Rio de Contas. On this route, Pedro Barbosa Leal suggested installing a customs house (casa de registro), through which all persons entering and exiting the mines would pass.

When Colonel Pedro Barbosa Leal returned to Salvador after five years of service as superintendent of the Bahian mines, he delivered to the Viceroy a quinto payment of “more than 4,000 eighths”^[11] (31.25 pounds) for the gold mined in 1724. This yield corresponded to 800 “pans” or bateias (shorthand for laborers) on the Rio das Contas and its tributaries. In reporting this yield to D. John V, the viceroy affirmed that the establishment of the main pillars of colonial administration —towns, magistrates, and tax collection— in the sertão, had been worth the Crown’s investment.

The contested town of Minas Novas de Araçuaí

The town of Minas Novas de Araçuaí would follow a different trajectory, grounded in a longstanding dispute between mineiro governor Lourenço de Almeida (1721-1732) and Governor of Bahia and viceroy Vasco Fernandes de Meneses (1720-1735). Each of them awarded competing licenses and concessions along the São Mateus, Fanado, and Araçuaí rivers to diverse sertanistas during the 1720s. The Paulistas Domingos Dias do Prado and Sebastião Leme, after reporting gold discoveries at the headwaters of the São Mateus River in 1727, proceeded inland along the Araçuaí, Itamarandiba, and Fanado rivers. Along the banks of the Fanado, they found an immense portion of gold mixed with sand and gravel, and then called the site “Bom Sucesso” or “Good Fortune” (Accioli, 1940, p. 60). They notified the Bahian governor and sent to the Royal Mint in Salvador approximately 7,060 pounds of gold, of which 20% would go to the Crown.

This unprecedented windfall propelled one of the most controversial chapters in the history of Bahian mining: the creation of the contested town of Minas Novas. Bahia would retain primary control for a number of reasons. First, Bahian governors had awarded letters patent to sertanistas in nearby Itacambira and Serro do Frio as early as 1705, clearly stating that these districts belonged to the Bahian government.^[12] Similar claims were made in four additional letters issued between 1705-1707, describing Itacambira, located just to the west of the Araçuaí mines as “sertão of this captaincy of Bahia.”^[13] Second, the sertanistas had made concerted efforts to establish patron-client relationships with Vasco Fernandes de Meneses since his arrival to Salvador da Bahia in 1720. These networks, cemented through the strengthening of militias, would be deeper and more extensive than what the Mineiro governor, Lourenço de Almeida, was able to achieve. Third, Vasco Fernandes astutely appointed Pedro Leolino Maris as mining superintendent of the new mines. Maris was quick to introduce effective governance and fiscal oversight through the creation of an incorporated town, a foundry, a Tropa de Dragões, and licenses and titles for sertanistas to extend the exploration to the east. Minas Gerais retained partial control over the new mines, as the region would be incorporated juridically into the mineiro judicial district (comarca) of Serro do Frio. The town be definitively and completely transferred to Minas Gerais only in 1760.

The rivalry between Vasco Fernandes and Lourenço de Almeida began almost as soon as the two took office, in 1720 and 1721, respectively. Almeida had arrived shortly after the suppression of a foundry rebellion in Vila Rica. Both he and Vasco Fernandes were eager to exert effective administrative control over mining in their respective territories. They quickly clashed over the boundaries of their respective jurisdictions, leading the Crown to set a vague boundary between the two captaincies at the Verde River in 1721.^[14] By February 1722, Vasco Fernandes had already begun to complain about Almeida, stating that “as governor of Minas, he considers himself omnipotent.”^[15] In a letter to the governor general of Rio de Janeiro, Vasco Fernandes referred to “the uncivil and unfortunate practice by which the Governor of Minas Gerais sought to disturb the respect of Your Excellency, harming his vassals.”^[16] One can imagine Almeida’s reaction when the king informed him, in 1723, that he was to report to Vasco Fernandes as the newly elevated viceroy of Brazil. The incensed Mineiro governor protested, citing his direct experience with unruly miners and adding; “With them one cannot govern well speculatively, but only by practical science”.^[17]

Clearly Almeida felt that Vasco Fernandes’s oversight did not contribute to the bem comum. However, Almeida was not particularly well-informed about Bahia’s southern interior, and his vision for the region was far less ambitious than that of the viceroy. The Mineiro governor had distributed numerous licenses for Paulistas to explore and search for gemstones and gold in Bahian territory, between 1723 and 1727.^[18] However, Vasco Fernandes awarded competing concessions to sertanistas to engage in both prospecting and territorial conquest. He authorized Domingos Dias do Prado to wage war against “the barbarian heathens” along the Jequitinhonha River and all of its branches, including the Piauí and Araçuaí (Barros, 1920, pp. 280-282). The viceroy also relied upon Colonel Pedro Leolino Maris, a militia officer with many decades’ experience in the sertões of Rio das Contas and Jacobina, to seek mineral resources and extend Portuguese territorial control.

The viceroy’s broader objectives were evident in an expedition from the Contas to the São Mateus River, organized by Colonel Maris in 1727.^[19] Maris had ordered Colonel Andre da Rocha Pinto to lead a party of nearly 100 men, consisting of white, indigenous, and Afro-Brazilian soldiers, Paulistas, and several slaves.^[20] They were to map the region, seek mineral wealth, identify promising locations for settlements, farms, and ranches, and engage in native conquest. The group was to establish a settlement at the juncture of the Pardo and Contas rivers and build roads from there, connecting the coastal town of Ilheus with Minas Gerais, and the Doce and Pardo rivers. As they progressively secured territory, they would settle farther into the sertão, “with the campaign leaving [the territory] cleaned out and safe, with the Indians settled under the control of missionaries.”

This initiative is yet another example of the territorial dynamics described by Santos (2010). This expedition, largely dominated by Paulistas, sought both mineral discoveries and to lay a groundwork for permanent territorial settlement. This was made clear in Colonel Rocha Pinto’s request that the “conquistadores” be rewarded with the title to any land they conquered. He proposed that any secured territory should be divided into eight parcels of graduated size to be distributed among the participants according to rank.^[21] In addition to arms and ammunition, the party carried axes, hoes, scythes, and machetes to clear the land for roads and farming. The council of Rio as Contas, which supported the endeavor, exhorted the sertanistas to establish “large cattle ranches, sugar mills, and sawmills” once they had consolidated the conquest.^[22]

The ambitions of Vasco Fernandes and his network of sertanistas went clearly beyond the formation of isolated mining settlements. Shortly after his arrival in Bahia, the viceroy quickly embraced the goal of indigenous conquest. Motivated by reports that Tupinambá raiders were attacking merchants on the road connecting Minas Gerais to the coastal community of Cairu, he authorized punitive expeditions there and elsewhere.^[23] In exchange for letters patent and licenses to explore new territories, the viceroy typically required sertanistas to conquer and convert native peoples. Maris would further these objectives by using Minas Novas de Araçuaí as a base to expand the Portuguese settlement from the forested river basins to the east. However, Jê speaking populations would successfully resist these incursions well into the 19th century (Paraíso, 2014; Bieber, 2014).

The “New Mines”

Rumors of new mines located along the Araçuaí and Fanados rivers attracted extensive migration from both Bahia and Minas Gerais. Governor Almeida’s views regarding the discoveries would prove contradictory. While he hoped to secure jurisdiction over Bahian mining territory to the north of Serro do Frio, he also firmly opposed the creation of additional towns, a stance that dated back to 1722. He stated: “In no instance does it benefit your Majesty’s royal service to create more towns in these mines, because it serves no other purpose than as a workshop for disobedient vassals.” He argued that the residents merely “aspired to be councilmen solely to avoid payment of the royal fifth.”^[24]

Governor Almeida also spoke out forcefully against the creation of new foundries and mints. He maintained that the expense of the equipment, its transport and maintenance, and the costs of processing the ore vastly exceeded any foreseeable profit. Moreover, popular resistance was intense: “All of these people have conceived a great horror for these houses, because they inflict great loss.” Miners purchased everything on credit, including slaves, and had to invest in costly sluice works (oiteros), as the easily extractable gold from the streams was long gone. Profit margins were too slim to demand full payment of the fifth.^[25]

Nonetheless, the Mineiro governor was infuriated upon learning that Vasco Fernandes had nominated a Guarda Mor to formalize mining claims at the captaincy border. In a series of letters to the Crown, Almeida alleged that Vasco Fernandes had acted improperly and hastily, given that the mines were not located within his jurisdiction. Moreover, he claimed that the quality of the mines had been exaggerated by their Paulista discoverers. According to his sources, they were “of little convenience, produce ordinary yield, and won’t last.”^[26] He alleged that miners from Rio das Contas, Jacobina, and Minas Gerais had already abandoned the area, leaving behind only vagrants, debtors, and criminals.^[27] It is curious that he tried so hard to claim a region that ostensibly offered so little. He falsely insisted that the mines were “undisputedly” located in the mineiro comarca of Serro do Frio”.^[28]

Governor Almeida predicted that Vasco Fernandes’s actions would lead to massive gold smuggling through the Bahian sertões.^[29] He also objected to the reduced tax rate established by the newly appointed Regent and Mining Superintendent, Pedro Leolino Maris. Maris charged only half an ounce per pan annually, one eighth of an ounce less than the then-current rate in Minas Gerais. Lacking a local foundry, Maris certified yields in writing and instructed the miners to submit their gold dust to the mint in Salvador da Bahia. Almeida predicted, with some justification, that mineiros would travel to Minas Novas to pay a lower tax and would then circulate their unprocessed gold illegally, thereby evading the royal treasury.^[30]

Almeida’s complaints were in vain. In 1729, the king ordered a survey to map the boundary between the two captaincies.^[31] D. John V ruled that the districts of Araçuaí and Fanados belonged to Bahia but granted a compromise by granting the ouvidor of Serro do Frio (in Minas Gerais) interim jurisdiction over the area.^[32] In 1731, the Overseas Council put forth a proposal to create a separate government for the comarca of Serro Frio and the disputed border territory, “due to the contrariness with which the Bahian viceroy and the governor of Minas Gerais always speak with respect to these new discoveries of Araçuaí”; the effort, however, came to naught.^[33] This divided structure remained contentious, as ambitious miners alternately sought confirmation of privileges from Bahian or Mineiro authorities, sometimes resulting in multiple claims to the same territory.^[34] Mineiro historian Diogo Vasconcelos plausibly claimed that miners preferentially dealt with whichever government was easiest to fool (1918, p. 46). Only in 1760, following Maris’s death, would Minas Novas de Araçuaí be transferred wholly to the captaincy of Minas Gerais.

The political grammar of conquest

How, then, was Crown authority established at the New Mines? Vasco Fernandes chose well when he appointed Pedro Leolino Maris as “General Mining Superintendent of the mines of Rio das Contas and all lands that have been or will be discovered in the continent and all of its territories with both military jurisdiction and that of the Republic.” In 1719, he was appointed as a militia colonel in Jacobina, covering an immense region bordered by the São Francisco, Paramirim, Verde Grande, Velhas, Rio Verde Acima, Rãs and Contas rivers.^[35] Over three decades as superintendent, he consistently sought Crown endorsement for further explorations to the east and to pursue the fabled lost silver mines of Moribeca.^[36]

Maris was particularly astute in building patronage networks that connected the viceroy to sertanistas and local officeholders. This was evident in a meeting he convened with “persons of distinction,” at a chapel dedicated to São José in the arraial of São Pedro de Fanados, on December 17, 1728. The group included a scribe from the royal treasury, three priests, numerous militia officers, a procurador, and at least one merchant. Among them were three wealthy slaveholders who had migrated from Minas Gerais: the brothers João and Francisco da Silva Guimarães, and Belchior dos Reis.

As Pedro Barbosa Leal had done before him in Jacobina and Rio das Contas, Maris first announced to the assembly that he had been appointed by the viceroy as Regent and Superintendent to quell unrest, preserve the bem comum, oversee the collection of the quinto, establish customs houses, and appoint judicial and military authorities. Although he claimed that those assembled had accepted his authority, he would later run afoul of some ambitious priests, the ouvidor of Serro do Frio, some Paulistas, and a Minas-based merchant, Manuel Rodrigues Costa. Maris’s conflict with Costa reveals what was likely at stake for the governor of Minas Gerais. According to Maris, Costa posted false public notices, claiming that all roads were legal and that no taxes were required for transporting goods from Minas Gerais.^[37] The conflict between Maris and Costa reveals that tax evasion on goods was rampant. Demand for foodstuffs at the new mines was so great that it caused shortages in Minas The imports included corn, wheat, manioc flour, olive oil, vinegar, wine, aguardente, cheese, tools, and dry goods. What is perhaps most telling is Costa’s assertion that, “from Minas to Minas, there can be no crime.”^[38] These traders could only be accused of tax evasion if Minas Novas were part of Bahia. The taxes on trade, at least initially, far outweighed those collected from gold. In 1728 the customs houses in Minas Novas had collected just over 180 pounds of gold, as opposed to 20.45 pounds in quinto payments. Taxes on trade are all the more striking when one considers that Maris had suspended taxes on imported foodstuffs.^[39]

The volume of trade sustained by the new mines in the early boom years suggests that the amount of gold mined far exceeded what was being taxed. Maris initially had decided to charge the reduced fee of ½ ounce per pan, as many miners were already heavily indebted upon arrival and provisions in the area were scarce and expensive. He then obtained the viceroy’s support to establish a foundry in Minas Novas. In addition to providing a more consistent means of collecting the quinto, the foundry would reduce the amount of unprocessed gold smuggled from Minas Gerais through the new mines.^[40] As Governor Almeida had predicted, the townspeople opposed the foundry. The Paulistas Brás Esteves Leme and Sebastião Leme led an uprising, compelling Maris to call upon the wealthier moradores to provide funds, ammunition, and men to quell the mob. These included the Silva Guimarães brothers and Belchior dos Reis, who armed their slaves in Maris’s defense. ^[41]

Maris would reward these men for their loyalty. He advised the viceroy that Belchior dos Reis e Melo should command and organize a troop of soldiers. Belchior had served in militias for over sixteen years, in his native Bahian Recôncavo and in Vila Rica. His letters patent revealed his willingness to arm his own slaves and fund expeditions into the sertões to apprehend criminals. He also supported the Crown during a Vila Rica foundry rebellion in 1720, mobilizing and provisioning a force of 70 enslaved and free men in a successful campaign that lasted over a month.^[42] Vila Rica’s municipal council had appointed him as a tax collector and as interim magistrate of the comarca in 1722, following the death of the ouvidor. He fulfilled these duties honorably “with clean hands, accepting no bribes.”^[43] He then relocated to the mines of Araçuaí with the governor’s permission and was established there by the time Maris arrived in 1728.

Belchior’s letters patent instructed him to organize a troop of 60 soldiers who were to ensure the collection of the quinto and crack down on “the unrest of seditionists who want to be kinglets in that colony.” He was to use his own funds to purchase uniforms, arms, and munitions. The Crown would pay salaries, but required organizing a corps of at least 40 men. Belchior’s willingness to establish and fund the dragoons represented a significant service to the Crown for the common good.

It is important to note that Belchior was partially of indigenous descent, “in large part caboclo.” How he amassed his fortune is unknown, but his wealth and slave ownership were quite likely crucial to his social ascent within the royal bureaucracy. While men of partial African descent sometimes were able to rise socially through frontier service or by filling lower-level administrative positions in smaller communities, it was unusual for a man of indigenous heritage to obtain significant wealth and power during this era (Russell-Wood, 2000). Having served as interim ouvidor was even more unusual and implies that Belchior was well-educated. It is also possible that Belchior might have served initially as Governor Almeida’s eyes and ears on the field in Araçuaí. However, he quickly inserted himself into Maris’s web of patronage, as evinced by his appointment to command the dragoons. The viceroy approved the troop’s formation late in 1729, despite his reservations about Belchior’s racial background and his belief that the soldiers were predominantly “criminals from Minas Gerais fleeing their debts.” He concluded that the troop represented the Crown’s best chance at securing payment of the quinto, and the Overseas Council concurred.^[44] The dragoons would be deployed in ten detachments extending eastward to the Itacambiruçú, Pardo, and Jequitinhonha river basins. Belchior would prosper, marrying a woman of Dona status and fathering two sons, one of whom would enter military service, obtain a medical degree in France, and continue to reference and his father’s and his own many services to the Crown to secure additional privileges and offices.^[45]

Maris discovered that the local populace was indeed as unruly as Governor Almeida had claimed. Bemoaning the “pestilent disorder, discord and uprisings” emanating from “the fumes of gold and the vapors of vice,” he requested permission to establish a town.^[46] The viceroy authorized the creation of the town of Nossa Senhora do Bom Sucesso das Minas Novas do Araçuaí. While under the administrative purview of Bahia, due to its remote location, the Mineiro ouvidor of Serro do Frio presided over the town’s inauguration on October 2, 1730 (Fonseca, 2011, p. 170).

As Governor Almeida had predicted, Bom Sucesso’s bust quickly followed the boom.^[47] The town’s population peaked at around 7,000 and then declined after the easily exploitable deposits found in stream beds became quickly exhausted. To exploit the rich ores in the serras, miners had to divert watercourses using costly sluice machinery. However, few had the technical knowhow and wealth to invest in this approach.^[48] The region was also prone to drought, which affected the productivity of farms, ranches and mines. Periodic drought, food shortages, and correspondingly high prices contributed further to the community’s economic precariousness. Consequently, the municipality requested relief from payment of the quinto, the head tax, and the obligation to pay the dragoons out of local tax revenues.^[49]

Well-capitalized miners with diversified holdings in agriculture, trade, and slaves had the resources to weather droughts and fund expeditions into the eastern sertões.^[50]Most prospectors were poor, however, and constantly on the move, seeking new strikes of gold and diamonds elsewhere in Bahia, Minas Gerais, and Goiás.^[51] Declining production and emigration were mutually reinforcing, and so the price of contracts correspondingly declined.^[52] To limit this population drain, Maris endorsed expeditions of river basins to the east, especially the São Mateus River, rumored to possess a fabulous mineral wealth.^[53] Maris also coveted the river basin’s fertile soil, the stands of valuable hardwoods, and the indigenous souls that might be rescued “from their enslavement to the Devil.”^[54]

Maris’s right-hand man in this endeavor was João da Silva Guimarães, the son of Pascoal da Silva Guimarães, a Portuguese merchant, miner, and slaveowner who had made his fortune in Minas Gerais. Pascoal was one of the ringleaders of the 1720 foundry rebellion in Vila Rica, for which he was arrested and died during his trial. His sons, João and Francisco, relocated to the Bom Sucesso mines, bringing considerable wealth and at least 200 slaves, whom they armed to avert a foundry rebellion in Minas Novas de Araçuaí. The brothers also funded the town jail’s construction.

João da Silva’s support at a crucial moment seems to have been decisive in securing Maris’s patronage. The mining superintendent authorized him to lead an expedition into the São Mateus River basin in 1730. João da Silva returned four years later, having lost his fortune and numerous followers, including his brother, Francisco, and many of his slaves. With Maris’s support João da Silva would spend the remainder of his life seeking additional mines and brokering treaties between indigenous leaders and the town authorities of Minas Novas. He obtained the position of mestre de campo da conquista do Rio São Mateus, but neither his formulaic claims of personal zeal, hardship and expense, nor his mineral discoveries were sufficient to leverage continuous support from the Crown for subsequent expeditions (Bieber, 2019).

Concluding remarks

The formation of these towns derived primarily from Viceroy Vasco Fernandes’s appreciation of sertanista knowledge and initiative. He cultivated mutually beneficial relationships with Pedro Barbosa Leal and Pedro Leolino Maris that facilitated the institutionalization of the sertão in the form of municipal councils, militias, infrastructural development, and more effective taxation of mining and trade. The viceroy understood the need of negotiating authority through a network of clients to harmonize his dispatches and decisions with the local conditions and hierarchies. These networks became somewhat more precarious following Pedro Barbosa Leal’s death in 1734 and Vasco Fernandes’s departure in 1735. The mining economy of Rio das Contas dwindled fairly quickly and shifted to ranching and farming. Jacobina’s mining economy persisted for a longer period, but also saw economic diversification over time. After 1735, Maris sought favor from both Bahian and Mineiro governors. While he secured additional positions for himself in 1738, he was less successful in obtaining Crown subsidies for subsequent sertanista expeditions as Araçuaí’s gold revenues dwindled.^[55]

The theme of local powers and councils is vast, beyond what can be exhausted in the space of this chapter. What matters is to point out that the villages of Jacobina, Rio de Contas and Minas Novas do Araçuaí were located strategically to facilitate the circulation of agents who employed the political grammar of conquest. The creation of councils in the interior marked the consolidation of monarchical authority within a complex territory fraught with internal disputes, both among the miners themselves and with indigenous populations, particularly at Minas Novas de Araçuaí. The creation of town councils was thereby mutually beneficial and desirable for both centralized and local interests. Towns were also able to generate income to fund urban infrastructure, roads and defense, which in turn supported the Crown’s interest in collecting revenue, maintaining law and order, and enforcing the “common good.”

Published primary sources

Accioli de Cerqueira e Silva, I. (1940). Memorias Historicas e Politicas da Província da Bahia. (Annotated by Dr. Braz do Amaral), vol. VI. Imprensa Oficial do Estado.

Costa, A. (1951) De como nasceu, se organizou e vive minha cidade. In: Anais do IV Congresso de História Nacional. Vol. 9, Departamento de Imprensa Nacional, 1951.

Cartas dos Governadores, 1720-1722. (1939). Documentos Históricos da Biblioteca Nacional, 44.

Cartas para a Bahia,1724-1726. (1940). Documentos Históricos da Biblioteca Nacional, 72.

Relação do levantamento que houve nas Minas Gerais no anno de 1720, governando o Conde de Assumar D. Pedro d’Almeida (1841) RIHGB, 3, 275-281.

Relatorio apresentado ao Vice-Rei Vasco Fernandes Cezar pelo Mestre de Campo de Engenheiros Miguel Pereira da Costa quando voltou da commissão em que fora ao districto das minas do Rio das Contas. (1843). RIHGB 5, 17, 42-54.

Transcrição da 2a parte do códice 23 seção colonial: registro de alvarás, cartas, ordens régias e cartas do governo ao rei 1721 – 1731. (1898) Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro, 3, 73-272.

Archives

Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU), Lisbon, Portugal (Projeto Resgate)

Manuscritos Avulsos referentes à Capitania da Bahia (AHU ACL CU 005).

Manuscritos Avulsos referentes à Bahia-CA (AHU CU 005-01).

Manuscritos Avulsos referentes à Capitania de Minas Gerais (AHU CU 011).

   

Arquivo Nacional Torre de Tombo (ANTT), Lisbon, Portugal

Cartas e outros papéis oficiais relativos ao Brasil, cód. 7.

  

Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia (APEB), Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

Seção Colonial e Provincial, cód. 337, Cartas Patentes, 1703-1712.

Seção Colonial e Provincial, cód. 345, Cartas Patentes, 1720-1723.

Seção Colonial e Provincial, cód. 347, Cartas Patentes, 1720-1728.

    

Arquivo Público Mineiro (APM), Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Coleção Seção do Governo (SG).

   

Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil (BNRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Divisão de manuscritos, cód 15, 02, 035

Divisão de manuscritos. Livro 7, 15, 2, 35

  

Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

DL 56.1-3, Códices de registro de cartas régias, provisões e requerimentos de S. Majestade e do secretário de Estado a que respondeu o Vice-rei do Brasil, Vasco Fernandes Cesar de Menezes, conde de Sabugosa. 1724-1726. 3v.

DL 970.3 Lata 5, Doc. 15. Autos de justificação em que são partes o capitão Manoel Francisco dos Santos superintendente das conquistas e o Coronel Pedro Barbosa Leal, 1730.

Arquivo 2.4.8, coleção Família César de Meneses. Index de várias notícias pertencentes ao Estado do Brasil e do que nele obrou o Vasco Fernandes de Meneses no tempo do seu governo, 1730-1737.

References

Almeida, K. L. N. (2012). Escravos e Libertos nas Minas do rio de Contas- Bahia, século XVIII [unpublished docctoral dissertation], Universidade Federal da Bahia.

Barros, F. B. (1920). Bandeirantes e sertanistas bahianos. Imprensa Official do Estado.

Bieber, J. (2019). Bandeirismo nos sertões da mineração: a família sertanista de João da Silva Guimarães. In C. Alveal, C. & T. Dias (Eds.), Espaços Coloniais: Domínios, poderes e Representações (pp. 81-104). Alameda Casa Editorial.

Bieber, J. (2014). Mediation through Militarization: Soldiers, Indigenous Translators, and Transcultural Middlemen of the Rio Doce Divisions, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1808-1850. The Americas, 71(2), 227-254.

Boxer, C.R. (1969). The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750: Growing Pains of a Colonial Society. U. California Press.

Calmon, P. (1929). A Conquista, Historia das Bandeiras Bahianas. Imprensa Nacional.

Calmon, P. (1950). O segrêdo das minas de prata; novos aspectos da conquista da terra. Editora a Noite.

Calógeras, J. P. (1904). As minas do Brasil e sua legislação. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional.

Conceição, H. S. (2018). O sertão e o império: As vilas do ouro na capitania da Bahia (1700-1750). [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

Conceição, H. S. (2017). Governando a periferia: A criação da comarca da parte do Sul da Bahia no Império Ultramarino Português – Século XVIII. XII Jornada de Estudos Históricos, 712-731.

Costa, A. (1951). De como nasceu, se organizou e vive minha cidade. Anais do IV Congresso de História Nacional, 9, 175-384.

Fonseca, C. D. (2011). Arraiais e vilas D’El rei: Espaço e poder nas Minas setecentistas. (Trans. Maria Juliana Gambogi Teixeira). Editora UFMG.

Fragoso, J., Gouvêa, M. F. (2009). Monarquia pluricontinental e repúblicas: algumas reflexões sobre a América lusa nos séculos XVI-XVIII.” Tempo, 14 (27), 36-50.

Fragoso J., Gouvêa, M. F. (2010). Na trama das redes: Política e negócios no Império Português, séculos XVI-XVIII. Civilização Brasileira.

Fragoso, J. (2017) Poderes e mercês nas conquistas americanas de Portugal (séculos XVII e XVIII): apontamentos sobre as relações centro e periferia na monarquia pluricontinental lusa. In J. Fragoso & N. G. Monteiro (Eds.), Um reino e suas repúblicas no Atlântico. Comunicação política entre Portugal, Brasil e Angola nos séculos XVII e XVIII (pp. 49- 99). Civilização Brasileira.

Ivo, I. P. (2012). Homens de caminho: trânsitos culturais, comércio e cores nos sertões da América portuguesa: século XVIII. Edições UESB.

Kuhn, F. (2013). Administração na América portuguesa: a expansão das fronteiras meridionais do império (1680-1808). Revista de História São Paulo, 169, 53-81.

Langfur, H. (2014). Frontier/Fronteira: A Transnational Reframing of Brazil’s Inland Colonization. History Compass, 12(11), 843–852.

Levi, G. (2018). Microhistoria e Historia Global. Historia Crítica, 69, 21-35.

Monteiro, N. G. F and Cunha, M. S. (2005) Optima Pars, 194.

Monteiro, N. G. F. (2010). A “tragédia dos Távoras”. Parentesco, redes de poder e facções políticas na monarquia portuguesa em meados do século XVIII.” In J. Fragoso & M. F. Gouvêa (Eds.), Na trama das redes: política e negócios no império português, séculos XVI XVIII (pp. 317-342). Civilização Brasileira.

Oliveira, P. M. (2014). As câmaras em Minas Gerais no século XVIII. Entre enquadramentos administrativos e desventuras tributárias. Revista História, 1(1), 98-123.

Paraíso, M. H. B. (2014). ‘O tempo da dor e do trabalho’: a conquista dos territórios indígenas nos sertões do leste. EDUFBA.

Ronney, J. C. (2017). Distinguishing Port Cities, 1500–1800. Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 15(4), 649-659.

Russell-Wood, A. J. R. (2000). Ambivalent Authorities: The African and Afro-Brazilian Contribution to Local Governance in Colonial Brazil. The Americas, 57(1), 13-36.

Russell-Wood, A. (1987). The gold cycle, c. 1690–1750. In L. Bethell (Ed.), Colonial Brazil (pp.190-243). Cambridge University Press.

Santos, M. R. A. (2010). Fronteiras dos sertões baianos: 1640-1750. Tese de Doutorado em História Social. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. FFLCH-University of São Paulo.

Vasconcellos, D. L. A. P. (1918). História media de Minas Geraes. Imprensa Official de Minas.

---